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2. DESPITE SINGULARITY: THE EVENT AND ITS MANIFOLD STRUCTURES OF REPETITION
Author(s) -
ESPOSITO FERNANDO
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
history and theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.169
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1468-2303
pISSN - 0018-2656
DOI - 10.1111/hith.12194
Subject(s) - repetition (rhetorical device) , temporality , historiography , event (particle physics) , history , epistemology , historicity (philosophy) , manifold (fluid mechanics) , linguistics , philosophy , politics , law , political science , mechanical engineering , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , engineering
This article's principle interest is in the “structures of repetition” that characterize supposedly singular events. The starting point for the analysis is Reinhart Koselleck's discussion of the event in “Structures of Repetition in Language and History.” Koselleck perceived events as arising from metahistorical structures that characterize all human histories regardless of the eras in which they took place and are narrated. This article scrutinizes Koselleck's understanding of the event as well as the underlying “structures of repetition” shaping it. In considering the question of the temporality of the event, this article distinguishes three strata of repetitive structures. First, it examines a seemingly trivial historiographical structure of repetition of the event, which is the iterative proclamation of the return of the event. It then analyzes Koselleck's foundational, yet rarely truly appreciated, “Structures of Repetition in Language and History” and maps out the fundamental structures of repetition, which are the conditions of possibility of events. Finally, it hints at a further linguistic stratum of repetitive structures. In light of growing interest in Koselleck's work in both German and Anglophone historiography, this article systematizes the manifold structures of repetition against the backdrop of current explorations of the event's temporality, thus surveying a facet of Koselleck's pioneering work that is too often forgotten.